A spiritual attempt to integrate the realms of the psyche that go beyond the known

Month: August 2017

Post navigation

in 2012 during a time of psychiatric drug withdrawal from Abilify and intense sleep deprivation as a result- i literally went through rapproachment again with my mom- i became a two year old testing boundaries around attachment- i just wanted to color and draw and sing and make messes and i was living in a world of symbols. my friends and my partner at the time were supporting too- they all watched me 24-7, in shifts. i eventually got involuntarily hospitalized by my co-workers at the Department of Behavioral Health- i had forced my mom to go to work with me- i had been missing from work for 2 weeks- once i got to work with my mom, i went on a manic rant at work about corruption and problems in mental health services there. i had completely tapered from Abilify. the involuntarily hospitalization was definitely necessary at that point. i had tried many things to myself to sleep- over the counter sleep meds, benadryl, and strong herbal teas. the psychiatrists at University of Pennsylvania’s hospital, of course, prescribed me 15 mg of Abilify- a very high dose, because that’s what they do. i got myself out early through some legal procedure that i can’t remember, and they were pretty upset about that. and then i tapered down to 5 mg in a few days, and i was totally fine again. for me getting down past the 2mg of Abilify taper was always the hardest. i was on that drug for 12 years. so happy to be psychiatric drug free. i also had to do one of my interviews for Grad School at CIIS while i was in the hospital. talk about managing a lot. My mindfulness coach and my therapist at the time had both gone to CIIS, isn’t that funny, but i didn’t know that at the time i started working with them…i believe my skype therapist, Will Hall, was off vacationing in Costa Rica for some of the time i was dealing with the drug withdrawal- he’s the one who encouraged my coming off. My mindfulness coach David Zeitler was very interested in Childhood Development and had worked with Ken Wilber. His dad had schizophrenia. anyway, i guess i’m a pretty interesting phenomena to observe apparently….i was also dating someone at the time who had connections with Julian Assange. He got called off to Spain for interviews before I got hospitalized. Or was it to deliver a suitcase of money? i think it was both. My father also wanted to support me at this time, but I was afraid of him at this time. During this time I also had a vision of the intergenerational legacies of pain in Bangladesh and South Asia.

***********

I love my parents so much. They found the Gold in the Shadow. So thankful to them. This is them at my birthday party in Philadelphia in June this year- jetlagged- they had just come back from Bangladesh the night before.